It has been far too long, nearly seven months we reckon, since the Tour’s last foray into the ramshackle realm of finding Doctor Who people in the most unexpected of places.
‘The Persuaders!’ was a British action comedy television series starring Tony Curtis and Roger Moore, produced by ITC Entertainment, and initially broadcast on ITV and ABC in 1971. It was high profile and expensive given the names involved, and is perhaps most notable as being Moore’s last of five TV series before Bond-dom beckoned.
So finding Roger Delgado in the next-to-last episode ‘To the Death, Baby’ was not all that much of a surprise. The series was so well-funded that many recognizable British character actors of note at the time were around, even it was for only a scene or two.
Delgado was no different in that regard. in an episode whose plot involved cons within cons, Delgado was but another of the cons, running a crooked high stakes card game with counterfeit cash. It was just a single scene with Moore, and Delgado never peers out from behind dark glasses, but it’s still a Master-ly performance, and more importantly, from a Doctor Who point of view, is perhaps the last thing Delgado made before Series 8 of Doctor Who came beckoning for him …
.., in every single story.